guest blogger Archives - Page 2 of 2

Autism and the Virtues of Single-Player RPGs

Guest blogger: Amalena is a freelance writer and editor, and just received her BFA in Creative Writing. She loves fantasy novels, singing opera, and video games. You can check out more of her work on her blog, Some Girl with a Braid, and follow her on Twitter.

As an autistic individual, there’s a special place in my heart for single-player role-playing games. I started with Skyrim, fell in love, and have since added other games such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Portal, Diablo, and Assassin’s Creed to my computer.

As an autistic, one of the best things for me when it comes to games is the predictability. While exploring the world can provide plenty of unpredictability as far as spawning adversaries, especially for the first time, doing replays removes much anxiety-inducing uncertainty and allows pure enjoyment. I also know that completing the storylines will result in positive social interactions from the NPCs populating the virtual environment. In real life, social disability colors all my interactions. I don’t know if completing my questline will result in a positive experience; I’m liable to put my foot in my mouth at any moment, sometimes without realizing it. Video games are generally devoid of those situations.

Accessibility in Destiny 2: A Deaf Gamer’s Perspective

Thanks so much to Chris for writing this guest blog post and sharing his point-of-view as a deaf gamer. Follow him on Twitch to see some stellar Destiny 2 action.

September 6, 2017, was a big day for both old and new Destiny players; Destiny 2 was finally released on Playstation 4 and Xbox One!

From my experience with Destiny 1, it was a game that you could pick up the controller and possibly never put it down. There was a rewarding feeling, with all the grinding, when you completed something hard as a team.

So now that Destiny 2 is here, I’ve been playing it almost non-stop! To tell you the truth, I wasn’t planning on buying Destiny 2 because I didn’t want to get addicted to it. I didn’t want to deal with the frustration of trying to find a team to play with when it’s required to have a mic to coordinate with the players. I don’t use a mic because I’m deaf. I don’t want to annoy people by repeatedly asking “what?” every time I didn’t understand them; but I ended up getting the game anyway, knowing that I may run into the same issues again. However, Bungie (developers of Destiny) somewhat made it easier to actually find people with the overhaul of the Bungie.net website; now it’s easy to post your LFG (looking for gamers) on there, and people tend to immediately join up.

Richard Marx and Fair-weather Friends

Red, tiny robot made out of paper, a black tear from his right eye, holding a paper heart that's been torn in half

By guest blogger Noemi Martinez, a poet-curandera and writer with Mexican and Caribbean roots living in South Texas. Her poem and photo collection South Texas Experience: Love Letters can be purchased on Hermana Resist Press’ website. You can also read her previous guest blog on selfie sticks.

When was the first time a friend broke up with you?

Lyrics for Endless Summer Nights-Richard Marx:

https://medium.com/@hermanaresist/lyrics-for-endless-summer-nights-eb3b995f004e#.t6a9do7zo

For me, it was the last day of school in the fifth grade. Before the end of the day, my best friend told me when we came back in the fall for the beginning of our 6th grade year, she wouldn’t be my best friend anymore. She brought a cookbook from home that day to give me, and I spent the summer learning how to make peanut-butter blondies and petit fours.

She knew I loved to bake, but I guess didn’t understand how heart broken I’d be coming into the sixth grade – an awkward tall girl who sneezed too much and was too much for their ex-best friend.

The Narcistick in You: Why We Should Embrace Selfie Sticks

Technology assists disabled people every day, whether it’s for activities of daily living, or for our passions and hobbies. Thanks so much to my friend Noemi and her daughter for sharing their experiences with us in this guest blog post.

Noemi's daughter using a camera, her walker in front of her. She is wearing a tie-die shirt. — Noemi’s daughter snapping some pics.

Noemi Martinez is a poet-curandera and writer with Mexican and Caribbean roots living in South Texas. Her poem+photo collection “South Texas Experience: Love Letters” can be purchased on Hermana Resist Press’ website.

As technology advances, so does society’s dependence on technology; and with it, a phenomenon of shaming. It’s not a new response, from society, to changes in the way we traditionally ascribed to do things. The horseless carriage of the late 1890s was an invention used by the elite and super wealthy. When the Model T came along in 1908, it was the most affordable automobile being produced. Before that, automobiles were extremely expensive and a luxury beyond our wildest dreams. There was the expected backlash, of course, of new and unknown technologies, as happens when one industry is replaced with another; the push from the railway industry and those that made a living from horse-drawn carriages.

The same can be said for the use of electricity, telephones, and media; the debate of newspapers as a dying form of media, or the debate on how print is dead.

But with new breakthroughs and advancements come societal benefits.

In the Age of Tech

Computer/Video Game Review #1 – World of Warcraft

This is the first in a series of articles I will be posting about video and computer-gaming accessibility. Today’s post is by a guest blogger, and I’m very excited about her contribution. I’ve been watching her YouTube videos for a while, and they’re super interesting and helpful to disabled gamers. I hope you enjoy! Also, I’m always looking for more guest bloggers. If you have something to share, please contact me – you can find my e-mail on the About page, or just leave a comment. Now, on to introductions and the review!

My name is April, and I am a disabled gamer. After years of thinking outside the box to find strategies to get around roadblocks in video games, some friends convinced me to start a website to share my tips in hopes of helping others. I started Ability Powered in early 2013. Now, I post articles, guides, and tips on my website, and have guides and accessibility first-look videos on Youtube. You can check us out at www.abilitypowered.com, or on YouTube at www.youtube.com/abilitypowered.

World of Warcraft is Blizzard’s popular MMORPG. Players are challenged with the task of questing and defending the world of Azeroth from invasions of all kinds. With villians and injustice at every turn, you and your fellow gamers quickly become heroes! Sounds fantastic, right? But what about accessibility?

Mobility in Azeroth is, honestly, as good as it gets. There are multiple options allowing players to choose how they wish to move their character. You can move with traditional keyboard movement, which is fully remapable in the keybindings menu. You can also move with your mouse in multiple ways. By default, you can move by holding down both mouse buttons simultaneously. Want to only press one button? You can do that by enabling the Click to Walk option. Click to Walk allows you to right click a point for your character to automatically run to. Need to walk with your right mouse button, or need an on-screen jump button? That’s also an option! The addition of Move Pad made it possible for disabled gamers to click an on-screen menu to move their character with simple presses of a button. That’s four movement options available to meet players’ needs.